Facebook Wants to Know What You’re Watching, Listening To

Ever hear a great song and not have any idea what it was? If so, you wouldn’t be the only one. To combat this age-old problem, the app Shazam was rolled out in 2002 as a simple dial code that allowed a cellphone to identify any song that was playing in the area. With an extensive database of digital sound files, Shazam grew into an app capable of identifying millions of songs, artists and television shows. On May 21, Facebook announced its own version of this popular feature in a move aimed to broaden the ever-expanding social network’s footprint.

The new Facebook update will use a device’s built-in microphone to identify television shows and music playing nearby. The app will then automatically generate a post to share this content. If a friend clicks on the shared post, he or she will be able to hear a 30-second clip of the music or television show identified. This new feature can also identify live television, including live sports programming, which Shazam has never managed to pull off.

As digital marketing strategies continue to advance rapidly, the development and enhancement of social-content sharing could mean big things for marketers. Savvy marketers may be able to use the data generated by this feature much in the same way cookies are used to track user preferences in order to generate customizable ad content that is better suited to draw in a specific consumer. By tracking the actual content regularly consumed by users, as well as the websites search for and visit, marketing professionals will be able to generate more accurate consumer profiles to assist in developing innovative advertising strategies.

It’s worth noting that, unlike many other Facebook features, this one is optional, meaning that users must manually enable it in their options menu for it to begin working. This is certainly good news for the privacy-conscious among Facebook’s user population, particularly at a time when the company has repeatedly come under fire for its preloaded privacy settings.